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Excessive Radiation Inside Fukushima Fries Clean-Up Robot (gizmodo.com)
"A remotely-controlled robot sent to inspect and clean a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant had to be pulled early when its onboard camera went dark, the result of excess radiation," reports Gizmodo. "The abbreviated mission suggests that radiation levels inside the reactor are even higher than was reported last week -- and that robots are going to have a hell of a time cleaning this mess up." From the report: Last week, Gizmodo reported that radiation levels inside the containment vessel of reactor No. 2 at Fukushima reached a jaw-dropping 530 sieverts per hour, a level high enough to kill a human within seconds. Some Japanese government officials questioned the reading because Tokyo Electric Power Company Holding (TEPCO) calculated it by looking at camera interference on the robot sent in to investigate, rather than measuring it directly with a geiger counter or dosimeter. It now appears that this initial estimate may have been too low. Either that, or TEPCO's robot is getting closer to the melted fuel -- which is very likely. High radiation readings near any of the used fuel are to be expected. Yesterday, that same remotely operated robot had to be pulled when its camera began to fail after just two hours of exposure to the radiation inside the damaged reactor. Accordingly, TEPCO has revised its estimate to about 650 sieverts per hour, which is 120 more sieverts than what was calculated late last month (although the new estimate comes with a 30 percent margin of error). The robot is designed to withstand about 1,000 accumulated sieverts, which given the failure after two hours, jibes well with the camera interference. This likely means that the melted fuel burned through its pressure vessel during the meltdown in March of 2011, and is sitting somewhere nearby.
Fission reactors convert slightly harmful raw material into extremely dangerous products which will remain like this for hundreds/thousands of years.
White noise propaganda, i.e. the entire premise is constructed for people who've never thought critically about anything. Do you know how long toxic mercury compounds released from coal remain toxic before they degrade? If they degrade? And do you care? Toxic mercury compounds from coal burning and gold mining is lowering the IQs of hundreds of millions of children around the globe right this very second. I'd much, much rather us deal with the possibility of very slightly higher cancer rates (maybe) than live with that.
Meanwhile, the entire Earth is one giant fission reactor, orbiting a fusion reactor that puts out dangerous amounts of UV radiation. Baby Jesus doesn't weep just because we made one corner of our fission reactor spaceship a little hotter, and there are countless economical ways to deal with this waste (one of the most sensible and economical being to keep it on site. If this isn't possible with current designs, they are doing it wrong.)
Bear in mind that our great, great, great, great, etc. grandsons will have still to maintain and fix the containers storing some of the products which our plants are currently generating.
1. Spoken like someone who doesn't understand what the time value of money is. Even if that chain of custody goes on for a literally infinite amount of time and the isotopes remain permanently dangerous, you are still describing a finite sum of money (and probably a much smaller one than you're imagining) unless you assume an average of zero interest / zero economic growth.
2. If you're still not satisfied, drop it in an ocean trench and stop whining about it. It's not that bad. It really, really isn't. The world is awash with radionuclides and almost every person alive (except for the exceptionally melanistic and the arctic-dwellers) has suffered a radiation burn and laughed it off, even though some of us will go on to die from it (malignant melanoma.) Send a sub down there first to make sure there aren't any interesting tubeworms we might accidentally kill, then chuck it in. What the hell do you think is going to happen? Do you honestly believe a nuclear reactor could poison a significant portion of the ocean, let alone poison it by slowly decaying in darkness a few miles down? I mean, *strangely enough* we didn't kill off all the fish in the Pacific even though we detonated several very large bombs near the surface...
For the security objection, anyone with the tech to retrieve a very heavy thing from those depths could obtain radioactive materials some other way far more easily.
Mercury doesnt have the radioactivity of what comes from Fission. Radioactive materials are exponentially worse because its like a little transmitter that constantly damages tissues around it.
Again with the white noise propaganda, from a 6 digit ID no less. Radioactive effects can be judged worse than toxic mercury only as a function of dose comparison (and also whether or not you prefer increased risk of cancer or degraded higher thought processes.) It isn't *inherently* worse. That's just dumb. You're full of millions of radioactive atoms right this very second. The dose makes the poison. There's even a theory that lower levels of radiation actually help make you more resistant to cancer by stimulating DNA repair mechanisms.
Starting with a fiat assertion that radioactive poisons are worse than heavy metal toxicity is just juvenile. If mercury poisoning doesn't sound sexy enough to you, try reading this. One drop spilled on a hand wearing a latex glove. One drop on a gloved hand... that's all it took to condemn her to a slow and agonizing death over the next 8+ months.